How to beat egg whites to soft or stiff peaks and not mess them up

Cooking is full of amazing transformations, but one of the more impressive is what happens when you beat egg whites. Watching them morph from transparent and slimy into fluffy, white clouds — made even more glossy with sugar — is to truly appreciate the magic and science of food.

A brief explainer on how it works: Similar to scrambled eggs, “foaming egg whites relies on proteins unfolding and then bonding to each other,” Harold McGee explains in “On Food and Cooking.” An egg foam consists of a liquid filled with gas. “It’s a mass of bubbles with air inside each bubble, and the white spread out into a thin film to form the bubble walls,” McGee says. Beaten egg whites lend structure, texture and loft to a wide variety of dishes, including souffles, meringues, cakes and mousses.